Standing Rock

Now comes a bit of quacking from a lame duck president; Barack Obama speechifying from the well-watered White House Rose Garden.

If Mr. Obama had the spine to truly “make America a leader in this mission”, he would stand together with the brave members of Blockadia, such as those presently blocking the North Dakota pipeline; he would exercise his vaunted intelligence and come to grips with the relationship between ecocide and neoliberalism; he would spend less time in senseless signing ceremonies that accomplish nothing but ego inflation for discredited global elites, and more time listening closely to the words of grassroots tribal leaders such as Judith LeBlanc, director of the Native Organizers Alliance.

In a recent interview, LeBlanc puts the Blockadia case directly, without tiresome political spin and hollow propaganda:

These are the true “turning points of history” — not the scribbled agreements of politicians splashing about in their bubble baths. The frenzy to extract fossil fuels and build toxic pipelines not only heats the planet past the tipping point; it destroys the very essence of life — all life.